Project Lambda
by Sandvich man
Summary: Think about your life. Done? Now imagine that everything was wrong. Freaky right? That's me in a nutshell. From my Fimfiction account since people are flaming it there.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter one V.2

Names are strange things right? Some people have totally cool names like Gordon Freeman and others have not-so-cool ones like Bob and Sally an- you get the idea. For me though, I hate my name. The reason? It's Aqua Jones. I mean it makes no sense whatsoever at all. Why, of all things would my dad call me that? On the bright side though, the company that I work for has a worse name-Transport Technologies or Transtech for short. (Although in the logo, it's written as TransTech.) Its government funded and we have developed some pretty advanced stuff there-Zero Point Energy Field Manipulators (Or gravity gun.) Sometimes though, people think we develop stuff for the transportation industry, which is wrong but it's more like a joke nowadays.

My job is, however, not so advanced. In fact, it reminds me of watching paint dry or something (I had watched paint dry on one occasion and believe me, it was way better than this). Basically, I stare at a screen for ten hours straight a day, making minute adjustments of numbers for some kind of portal device's emitters and believe me, it was boring like hell. In fact, I once did complain to my boss on why they can't just invent some robots to do my job. I mean, this is the most advanced research facility in America. And what did he say? No. To quote what he said, "We need creativity for this job." Well, damm him. I mean seriously? Can't they just invent a creativity app for the robots and let me do something more interesting? But since their Klondike bars here are quite good, I'm not complaining for now. Until they run out of money for desserts, I'm not quitting (yet).

That was until in June when things started to get interesting. It started with me messing around with the emitters. I was basically randomly typing numbers into the system until it gave me an error message saying that if I continued, the main generator thing would blow up. So, as any sane person would do, I stopped immediately. Well, at least until I was reading the data outputs. It said that somehow, I had managed to find a new universe!

Well, that wasn't a disappointment. I thought to myself. Sending the data to the operators in the Lambda sector, I continued my work as usual. You know, trying to look busy when what you're really doing is slacking and thinking about lunch and whatever you're parents told you the last time you met them.

It was a month later that I knew what I really caused. It all started with a meeting in one of the many auditoriums scattered throughout the facility. There was a stout bald headed-male in his fifties, standing on the stage wearing a bow tie and some kind of suit with a beard that reminded me of the guy who invented Minecraft (Sadly, he's dead.), whom I recognized as Greg Olsen, the administrator of the facility. Since I had only seen him a few times around the facility, this meeting might be interesting after all. Picking a seat at the back out of habit, I waited for the stream of people to stop and the meeting to begin. It took quite a long time actually.

"Ahem. Testing one two three." Some AV technician spoke into the microphone, startling me and making me jump up as I was just starting to doze off. The holotank behind him flickered and came to life. "Well then, good morning everyone! Sorry to interrupt your sleep at-" Mr. Olsen said, glancing at his watch. "-6.30 A.M. Now, most of you here will probably have heard of the Quantum Space Hole tunneling project or, the Lambda project."

"Now, I know that working on this project is considered one of the most tedious projects undergone in the facility. In fact, I had quite a lot of transfer requests due to this. Now, before you all start to blame me for missing breakfast, I'll just let you know that today is the day that you finally get to see the fruits of your…erm work." There was a brief moment of laughter at his mistake. Looking around though, I had notice that about forty percent of the room had dozed off. Well, not a big surprise considering that most of them, including me had to work extra yesterday due to some sort of system malfunction.

"First up, there's this world which, if you ever played those Valve games you'll know what this is." The holotank flashed for a while before the pictures came on. From what I could see, it looked like it came from a security camera-Sector D test labs to be exact. The timestamp read "22-3-2025", three years before I was employed. The quality was pretty grainy though. I could, from this distance, see what seemed like headcrabs from Half-life crawling all around the room. There were even a few zombies too, doing what zombies do-moaning.

"The 2025 incident. Not one that went well with the history books. We did manage to regain control after a week or so of fighting with some help from the army though." At that exact point, the angle of view changed abruptly. "YABBA!" a zombie screamed as it clawed at the screen, the sound startling the sleeping audience. Then, the video ended with static.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, do not be alarmed. This happened only once due to a misfire with one of the earlier prototypes. Repeats of this are near impossible. Anyway, during the course of the project, we have found many other alternate universes or other worlds, each one more or less different than the last."

Mr. Olsen began forwarding through the pictures. Some of them looked quite nice, others not so. There was one that had an atmosphere of hydrochloric acid fumes and another with an intense gravity that cracked the camera lens.

"All of these are, of course proof that Transtech has advanced science by leaps and bounds. Each of these worlds or universes has made us understand the universe better. In fact, we even managed to prove the string theory on one of them. However, we have yet to discover one for long term stay or exploration." He did something which I couldn't see from my distance and a new video screen popped up behind him.

"Well, at least until this one, which we found about a month ago." He continued.

By now, I wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying. Instead, I was more focused on what was playing behind him. The place looked a lot like Earth, with green grass and trees and clouds hanging in the blue sky overhead. Oddly though, the colors seemed a lot brighter and livelier. The auditorium burst into excited chattering for a few minutes until Mr. Olsen raised a hand or something for silence.

"There seems to be at least what looks like normal rabbits and other critters." The landscape behind him changed to some snow-caped mountains and a few hills in the background. "Even better, from the probes that we have managed to send over, we are able to say that the atmosphere there is about 27% to 30% oxygen and the gravity is just slightly less than Earth's. There's only one problem with this world though."

The view changed to a bird's eye view of a large town, with winding roads and thatched roofs. "The problem is simply put this way. There's intelligent life here but the residents aren't human. Show the next video please."

What I saw next probably just made my mine blow up. It was full of PONIES! Well, multicolored ponies that look nothing like the ones back on Earth to be exact. The other staff in here must have felt the same way as me.

"The ponies there use tools, build things and most obviously, come in a rainbow of colors which isn't possible on Earth, well unless their owners dyed them. Interestingly, not all of them walk. Enjoy the show."

The whole room exploded into chaos that almost reminded me of school, with staff members leaping from their seats, pointing, talking and shouting excitedly at one another. I blotted out most of the noise and just focused on the feed. The ponies were pretty amazing, with some kind of winged ponies flying around and one wearing a pretty cool hat. It looked like some sort of helmet with those soda thingies. There were also some of those uni-things. You know- the ones with horns. A baby pink one was using some sort of telekinesis to read a book.

"According to some locals, we overheard them calling this world 'Equestria'." Mr. Olsen announced. Unfortunately for him, it seems like no one except me was paying attention to him. "HEL-LO? I'm still talking!" When there was still no response, he turned off the video feed, causing the audience to groan in disappointment.

"What we need now are of course, volunteers to do some research." He said. "How do the ponies behave? Do they have religions? Do they have any kind of castle system? There's only so much we can learn from drones."

It took me a heartbeat to make up my mind. Do the deskwork or go for the adventure? The answer was pretty obvious. Without hesitation, I shot my hand up.

"Ah! We have a volunteer! What's your name miss?" he asked me.

"Erm… A-Aqua sir Aqua Jones."

"And why did you want to volunteer for this?" he asked me.

God, I hate interviews. I thought to myself. "Well, firstly, I'm bored of staring at a screen for ten hours straight and secondly, well I'll just say it's for fun."

"Alright then" He replied. "Any other takers?"

Over the course of the next five minutes, about five more volunteered. It took some sweet talk to get another five to go. After another five minutes though, it seemed like that was all he was going to get, no matter how much cake he was going to throw in.

"Very well then. We have eleven brave souls, ready to explore the unknown. Everyone else, you can go for breakfast. Volunteers, please stay for a minute. Oh! And do not, under any circumstance, tell anyone else about this meeting! Doing so is a violation of-dang it. Never mind." He muttered after noticing that the auditorium had mysteriously cleared out in two minutes.

Making my way towards the stage, I caught the eyes of another volunteer, who was a man called Caboose. He was pretty good, except that he was usually dreaming so it wasn't so surprising when he asked me why we had to go to meet Mr. Olsen. "You volunteered for the project silly!" I explained to him. His response was to nod and ask me what project was it.

There were two other volunteers already at the stage. One of them was looking around idly while the other was yawning like mad. Finally, someone gave a slight cough.

"What? Who was that?" Mr. Olsen looked around startled. He gave a small shriek as his elbow bumped into another volunteer. "Ah! But of course, the volunteers! Excuse me for screaming just now. Alright...forms…"he muttered, digging into his briefcase. "Ah! Here it is. Here you go." He continued, handing everyone a manila colored folder with a seal on it.

It was a standard safety seal-the ones that read 'Do not tamper', which I just tore open. Inside were some papers-disclaimers, a medical checklist and some other paperwork.

"Read these over ASAP, sign them and meet me at Conference Room-" he glanced at his organizer before continuing. "49 A in three hours. Now, hurry up for breakfast. I don't want anyone to go hungry during the meeting."

Conference room 49 A turned out to be located near the cafeteria. It was about the standard conference room size-twenty seats, two at the front and back and eight at each side. There were two security guards stationed at the door but they didn't stop me from entering. There were about five volunteers already seated at the plastic table. There were also some other people at the back of the room. There was a nurse who introduced herself as Mrs. Amanda, head of medical sciences or something; some guy from the pentagon who I didn't really; some guy from the pentagon who I didn't really care and of course, Mr. Olsen.

It took about ten minutes for everyone to arrive, and after they did, Mr. Olsen seated himself at the front seat. "Hello everyone, welcome back. I trust that you have signed the paper work?"

We all assured him that we had.

"Alright then. Please, hand them in." After handing the papers to him, he promptly began.

"Before we start, I'll just let you know that once I've begun, there's no going back. Of course, you can leave the room at any time you want but if you choose so, I'm afraid we'll have to Neuralize you."

At this point, a woman stood up and made some excuse before running out of the room. One of the guards poked his head in but Mr. Olsen shook his head, saying that there was no need to Neuralize her. The guard nodded and closed the door again. Honestly though, I was okay upon hearing this. My dad had taught me not to regret my own decisions.

"Anyone else wants to leave? No? Good. Let's begin." Mr. Olsen pressed a button on the table and the lights dimmed. A projector at the back of the room warmed up and the pastel colors of Equestria filled the room.

"There are a few things that we kept away from the video, mostly the wild animals there." The feed then changed to one of a dark forest. Unlike the rest of Equestria, it looked forbidding and to some extent, scary. "The Everfree forest, as the locals call it. Home to some creatures that would make a lion look like a kitten." The video started to show some kind of greenish chicken with a dragon's body turning something into stone, proceeded by some kind of eel snatching a wandering goat and gobbling it up whole. Looking around, I noticed that another three volunteers had left the room. The video also showed some pretty gruesome stuff too, which for the sake of my breakfast, I didn't watch.

The next thing he did was to give each of us a bunch of papers to go through. Here's what one of them said:

"Due to the high risk of the operations volunteers have to go through, Transtech shall be responsible for these injuries only: Death, total paralysis and loss of any limbs. Any other injuries are a result of side effects and thus, Transtech will not be responsible. Examples are: Osteogenesis, blindness and deformation. Transtech reserves the right not to compensate where deemed unacceptable."

The other pages were about what they were going to do, like implanting sensors and a medical monitoring system and some kind of Hazardous Environment system. By now, only a handful of volunteers remained. (No guts I guess.)

It took like thirty minutes for me to finish the whole thing. After the papers, the nurse started to talk. "Now, most of you are going to wonder what this operation is going to be. Allow me to explain-" the video changed to a presentation. "-now, what we're going to do is going to…alter your physical form into a pony."

"And how do you do that?" a male's voice piped up.

Mrs. Amanda seemed pretty uncomfortable upon hearing this. "There are some Nano machines that we managed to capture from one of the universes and we did manage to reverse engineer them. We managed to work out all the glitches and-" she was cut off by the man again.

"I'm sorry. This is too weird for me. I'm out." He said. The rest of the volunteers nodded and followed after him. Well, only me now.

"Alright, there's only you left I guess." Mr. Olsen said. I gave a small shrug. Unlike them though, I thought it was going to be pretty interesting, going to Equestria and all so my mind was already made up.

"Ms. Jones, there's nothing else I can offer. If you go, I'll-" I held up my hand.

"I'll go on only one condition."

"Which is?"

"If I get to be one of those winged ponies, it's a deal."

"Gladly done." He replied. "Well then, I'll upload the necessary information onto your data pad. Go back and read through it thoroughly before next week and head to Sector D medical wing for the operation."

Well then, time to think up of a name.


	2. Chapter 2

On the day of the operation, I was as nervous as hell. I mean, who won't after learning that some big shot science company is going to implant some kind of HUD system into your body? (If you don't feel that way, congratulations.)

So, there I was, in some sort of operating room with a huge tank filled with a thick, green mixture, waiting for the sedatives to take effect. It must have worked almost instantly as the last thing I remembered was lying on a bed.

"Turn off the lights." I mumbled as I tried to get up. Finding next to no strength, I continued to lie on the bed, adjusting to the lights. Everything was too sharp. The smells and the sounds were a bit too much for me to handle. Like the smell of sanitizers and the beeping of some sort of ECG. Also, there was a sensation equivalent to knives stabbing my whole body and god that hurt. It was a good ten minutes before a nurse came in. She said something about turning off the sedative drip and the whole operation being a success. However, I was too tired to reply to her. Unknowingly, I dozed off again.

"Why am I tied up?" I asked no one in particular. I had been in this strange dark room for something like twenty minutes, tied up against a wall or something. And to top it off, the room reeked of some disgusting smell that was like someone's vomit and sweat mixed together. There was a person or something in the room, but he had his back turned on me and no matter how I tried to get his attention, he just ignored me. That was when he turned his head around and for the first time, I saw his face and believe me, it wasn't a pretty sight. About half of his face was rotted away, infested with maggots. The other half was burned pretty badly. He gave me this kind of weird, distorted smile before grabbing a knife of some sort and then plunged it into my chest.

"NOO!" I screamed, getting up, or the equivalent of trying to get up while being restrained. Looking around, I noticed that my bed was surrounded by doctors-a lot of them. Some of them were writing on a clipboard and others were busy fiddling with some machines.

"Well, Miss Jones, I am glad to see that you are okay." A red-haired doctor told me, undoing them. "Terribly sorry about the restraints, but we had to put them on as you were trashing about in your sleep. Even injured one of my colleagues." He continued, pointing towards another doctor who was in a wheelchair, his legs wrapped in bandages. 'Am I really that strong?' I asked myself mentally. The last time I landed someone in the hospital was when I was making some super-powered catapult and I didn't even make physical contact with him.

After the red haired doctor undid all of the straps, they made me do a series of tasks like holding a pen, waving my arms-no wait hooves around. It was pretty strange, being able to do stuff normal horses or ponies can't do. Weirdest was when they asked me to try unfurling my wings and flapping them. It felt like trying to stretch my back or something without even learning to do it in the first place. After all that, they left me all alone in the room.

That was when I started to get a good look of my new body. My mane and tail was a shade of Brandeis blue with a stripe of Electric blue running in the middle. My coat was a shade of Dodger blue or whatever blue it was. Judging from the mirror directly in front of my bed, my eyes were bluish green.* The cutie-mark or what Equestrians called it was three clouds, which I had personally requested. The reason was pretty simple-I liked clouds. I even made some kind of machine that made clouds out of almost any liquid you give it. (My mom complains that ever since I made it, she had to clean up the house from chocolate milk-not my fault, she always thinks it is a blender.) My vision was pretty messed up as I had eyes that were bigger than normal. It felt like someone had turned on 'wide screen' mode in real life. (If you're wondering though, my mane looks like a bird's nest with all the feathers.)

Just as I was about to try out walking, someone knocked on the door. Before I could say anything though, they came in. Simmons, Mr. Olsen, some guy who I don't know and my close friend Cashmere. (Author here: Cashmere was originally Anna. I swapped the names.) "Oh hi! I'm a pony." I said, mostly because I was bored and because I knew what Cashmere was going to say next.

"YOU'RE SOOO CUTE!" she shrieked just as I threw the blanket over me. You see, Cashmere had this urge to stroke whatever kind of furry animal she came across and I had no intention of getting stroked, especiallyy in front of two guys. Luckily, she did not so I crawled out of the blanket, getting hopelessly tangled up in the process. The guy with brown hair introduced himself as Doctor Miller, head of the Medical R&D facility while Cashmere helped to free me from the bed sheet. "Before we try walking or anything, I'm going to check on your sensors and implants" Dr. Miller said, as he took out what looked like a scanner. He then proceeded to do whatever he needed to. One thing I noticed was that I could actually smell his scent and to put it politely, he didn't smell good. It took him quite a while to finish scanning and calibrating. During all that though, I had to put up with questions from Simmons and Cashmere. Simmons was doing his best to troll me and to be honest, I really felt like kicking/bucking him in the face. Thank goodness Dr. Miller finished before I could do it.

Before I tried walking, I decided to ask the Doctor some questions. The first thing was about why I could smell beyond normal human ranges. "Well, we boosted you're nasal cavity's by about 50% so it'll take some time to get used to. Unfortunately though, you will be able to smell chlorine and other substances in water." I nodded slowly. Freaky. Just then, my stomach growled. "Erm…yeah I'm hungry." I muttered. Dr. Miller nodded upon hearing this. "That is a wonderful idea Miss Jones! It's about time you had some solids, especially after a month in bed."

"What? I was in bed for a month?" I asked, shocked. "I thought they said two weeks?"

"Well, we did run into a problem of running out of bone and muscle to shape your wings from so we had to grow them from scratch. Oh, and I know you will be shocked on hearing this, but I'll just tell you-we made your new body as accurate as possible."

"Like?" I asked, still not sure what he was going to say next.

"You can, and definitely will go into heat sometime." he replied, hugging the door. 'Great I'm going to go all crazy about…sex sometime.' I thought, bringing a hoof to my face.

"Never mind-" I lied before continuing. "- I'm going to eat." Crawling out of the bed, I managed to stand on the ground, although shakily. Standing on four legs was strange and, new. My whole body's center of gravity had changed and the more I tried to balance myself, the more I felt like falling over.( Also, to my disappointment, I noticed that I was about as tall as where the other's waists were. Since I was slightly taller than average when I was human, this would need a long time getting used to.) Remembering a tactic from a book, I closed my eyes and let my body take over naturally. It worked quite effectively and I decided to try walking straight away. Raising my right fore-hoof, I took an experimental step forward-only to crash into a thankfully, empty cart. "Ow." I muttered as I crawled out of it.

"Aqua, I've got a friend who raises horses and they walk something like left fore-leg, left hind-leg, right fore-leg, and right hind-leg." Cashmere advised me. "Got it." I replied as I tried again. Surprisingly, it worked and, with a bit more of falling over and tripping, I was able to walk without a hitch. Just at that exact moment, someone or, something spoke into my ear.

"Calibrating internally mounted head's up display." The disembodied voice said. Great timing too as I was trying to walk down some stairs. That sudden interruption startled me so much that I somehow forgot where I was supposed to put the next hoof, making me tumble down the remaining steps.

"Are you okay?" Mr. Olsen asked me while I crawled back up again.

"No! There's this voice inside my head!" I moaned. It's now going on about some munitions monitoring system thing and god, it's annoying me off.

"Ah! That reminds me! It's the Hazardous Environment system." Dr. Miller explained. He must have seen the confused look on the face so he began explaining. "Basically, it monitors your vital signs and protects against some environmental hazards that we thought you might face. There's also an automated drug administering unit, Geiger counter, speed, altitude, pressure and oxygen monitoring system."

"That's very useful thank you very much. Now, how the HECK DO I TURN IT OFF?" I ask, irritated.

"Well, it's controlled by your brain's neural system as all you need to do is just to think that it's off." That's interesting. I thought as I followed his instructions. Amazingly, it worked!

It took a good thirty minutes to reach the cafeteria, as the medical wing was located above ground, which meant that we needed to take a tram back into the main compound. By the time we had finally reached there, I could eat an elephant. It was pretty awkward, with everyone staring at me, and then clapping for no reason. (Funnily, I felt like slapping every one of them. I mean, why of all people, was I the only one to volunteer?) Avoiding the eyes of the scientists, I picked an empty table to sit. It took me awhile to drag the chair out with my mouth but I managed to get on it in the end. (Ever wondered how a chair tasted like? Wooden ones taste like plastic with a hint of dirt.)

Being a pony also meant that my dietary options were limited to vegetables since when I requested for a burger, Simmons practically went crazy, screaming something like "You can't eat burgers!"

"Fine. Then I'll have three apples, twenty pieces of cabbage and what? Fifteen stalks of celery." I replied sarcastically. In the end, Cashmere went to get some food that she thought was acceptable.

It took about ten minutes before she returned and by then, I was arm-wrestling or, hoof wrestling with Simmons. I beat him like, ten or so times. Anyway, the food she bought back was quite appealing to me. There were two Apples, a couple of Carrots, a chocolate Klondike bar a bottle of water and some other greens. The apples were easy since I had larger molars than a Human would, I stuffed the whole thing into my mouth. It was sweet, which was good as the last thing I wanted was to taste sour juice. I probably didn't notice, but I basically finished the tray in three minutes flat. "What? I did say I was hungry." I said to the trio who were staring at me, mouths wide open. Rolling my eyes, I proceeded to finish off the Klondike bar.

Seeing that they haven't finished eating, I decided to take a sniff of myself. "Gah! I smell!" I exclaimed. A month in bed certainty didn't help my personal hygiene. "Erm… guys, I'm going to need a shower." I muttered as I started to head back towards my room.

"GAH! Stupid comb!" I exclaimed as I fumbled with a comb stuck in my mane. No matter how I tried to get it out of the tangled mess, it just refused to budge. Refusing to lose to some worthless comb, I tugged harder. "SNAP!"

"HOW THE HECK?" I exclaimed, looking at the handle in my hooves. I mean seriously? The comb broke into half? 'What kind of poor quality comb is this anyway?' I thought to myself ruefully as I dried myself with a towel.

"Oh hi Aqua!" Cashmere greeted me cheerfully as I came out of the room, with the half-comb still stuck in my mane. "Do you need help with the comb?" she asked me, trying hard not to laugh. "Yes. It snapped into half in my mane! Is my mane made of metal?" I asked no one in particular.

It took her sometime to untangle the blasted thing out of my mane. Realizing that my only comb was now destroyed, she took out her own to help me comb my mane.

My reaction to training was mostly mixed, since some bloke decided that the best way for me to learn how to fly involved chucking me off a plane at a height of 5 kilometers above ground. The first few lessons were scary but after I got the hang of it, I just couldn't stop. Especially now that I could walk on clouds! If you ever wondered, they feel like cotton wool and a bit colder and they make great beds too! I wasted a couple of lessons taking a nap on them. In the end, someone decided to play rock music into the implanted radio to force me down. There was another time where I went a bit too fast and I created some Sonic Boom which shattered almost all the windows in the facility. Believe me; was not happy with that.

*I am not good with colors.


End file.
